Oral Torah and Covenantal Ethics: Moral Authority, Halakhah, and Transmission in Bete Israel Tradition

This article examines the ethical framework of Bete Israel (Ethiopian Jews) as a coherent Jewish moral tradition shaped within the distinctive historical and religious environment of Ethiopia and rooted in covenantal theology, biblical law, and lived religious authority. Drawing on textual analysis, oral traditions, and the authors’ scholarly and institutional work at the International Center for the Study of Ethiopian Jewry at Ono Academic College, the paper challenges portrayals of Bete Israel ethics as merely customary or as lacking a developed system of binding religious obligation. It argues instead that Bete Israel ethics constitutes a fully normative Jewish moral and religious tradition, shaped by priestly–communal leadership of the Kesim, communal maintenance of norms, and a theologically grounded ethic of collective responsibility. The article situates Bete Israel moral reasoning within broader Jewish ethical discourse, highlighting distinctive approaches to authority, sin, repentance, purity, and moral education. The study further argues that the migration of Ethiopian Jews to Israel exposed both the strengths and vulnerabilities of an orally transmitted ethical tradition, disrupting longstanding mechanisms of authority and transmission while prompting new forms of institutional renewal and ethical adaptation. The final section examines encounters with modernity in Israel, including military service, biomedical dilemmas, and ritual purity, showing how Bete Israel ethical categories are reinterpreted under contemporary conditions. The study advances a multi-centered understanding of Jewish ethics in which covenantal normativity may be sustained through diverse modes of authority and transmission, including oral, communal, priestly, and textual forms.